Texas CPS warrant shopping mystery - continuation
As practically everyone in America knows, the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires police to obtain a warrant signed by a judge before they enter private property to look for evidence of a crime or to apprehend a suspect.* A judge — before signing a warrant — must find “probable cause” to support the government’s forced entry onto private property.
But mystery surrounds the circumstances that led, eventually, to Judge Barbara Walther signing the warrant that authorized Texas Rangers, Sheriff Doran, and Texas CPS to enter FLDS homes on the YFZ Ranch at the beginning of April. One of the mysteries is suggested by this story first broken, on May 22, 2008, by ABCNews:
But a local judge had initially refused to allow Texas Rangers to search the compound, according to a statement from Texas Ranger Leslie Brooks Long. Long then took the same information to a different judge, who approved the search warrant, his statement says. (emphasis added)
Over the past few days, I have spoken with one current Cobb County Georgia SWAT team member and a former police officer living in Virginia. Both of these gentlemen confirmed my understanding that it is considered very bad form to do what the ABCNews story says Ranger Long did. Essentially, the story says that Long couldn’t convince the first judge to issue a warrant and decided to take the very same story to Barbara Walther knowing or hoping that she would sign it.
My SWAT team contact told me that in Cobb County, the team always takes its warrants to the magistrate on duty. If that magistrate refuses to sign, the warrant is dead unless the team can gather additional evidence to take back to the magistrate. He said that most of the Cobb magistrates are extremely demanding and closely question the officer requesting the warrant to ensure that probable cause does, in fact, exist. Further, he said that if he were to “shop” a warrant as Long allegedly did, there would be hell to pay on the back end — such as exclusion of evidence obtained in the search or other sanctions — if the case ever went to court.
All this leads me to ask several questions — assuming the accuracy of the ABCNews report — that some readers might help answer:
1. Is warrant shopping common practice either in Texas, generally, or in Eldorado and San Angelo?
2. If warrant shopping is NOT a common practice, what motivated Ranger Long — a Ranger veteran who should presumably know better — to shop the warrant?
3. Why did Long pick Barbara Walther as the second stop in his shopping spree?
4. Who was the first judge? (Note: Several witnesses have apparently identified Judge Johnny Griffin as this judge. But there is some question as to whether Griffin had authority to sign such a warrant because Griffin, while a County Judge, is not an attorney.)
5. Why did the first judge refuse to sign the warrant?
6. If the police would have hell to pay for shopping a warrant in Cobb County, Georgia, what about in Texas? If they don’t have hell to pay in Texas, why not?
* Exceptions are made in true emergencies not present in the FLDS case.
4 comments
The answers are, from this corner:
1. Yes. Unfortunately so. Statewide. In some counties and cities it is worse than in others. Prosecutors have publicly recommended recently on the TDCAA website to a DPS Trooper that if the first judge will not issue a blood warrant, call the judges who administer the first, wake them up if necessary, and ask them to issue the warrant.
2. He had orders, most likely. Or she. And he/she is probably a political Ranger, carrying out political orders rather than acting as law enforcement. Political Rangers have a history of being used as strike breakers; now they are being used to bust churches. Progress in Texas, The National Laboratory For Bad Government.
3. To quote Bob Dylan: “How come ya have to ask me that?”
4. Good question.
5. Why? Because Long’s affidavit was a bleeding work of art. It not only did not show probable cause for issuing a warrant, it affirmatively demonstrated that there was no probable cause.
6. Because in Texas there is a corrupt and corrupting working, though not written, agreement amongst law enforcement, politicians, and State judges (all of whom are also politicians), that law enforcement will get whatever it wants, and law officers will be given lots of slack.
In terms of corruption, it sounds like Chicago, only there it is the Chicago political machine, the SDS or (supposed reformed) Weathermen who get what they want, and the “pigs” better get out of the way… Different tools, same results.
I can tell you without breaching any confidentialities, that in Texas, now, SDS means Seniors For A Democratic Society.
I’m still waiting for their explanation as to why they did not go in immediately after the first call told physical assaults.
Just a thought here, could it in any way relate to the order provided to the CPS?
Ties indirectly between the CPS and walthers?
CPS saying ‘follow me, I know a judge’?
I do recall that it was the Rangers who held the CPS back early on.
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